Yum Cha

Guangzhou residents like to “Yum Cha” which literally means “drinking tea,” especially morning tea. When they meet in the morning, they usually greet each other with “Have you drunk tea?” Drinking tea has become a habit of Guangzhou residents. By drinking tea, Guangzhou residents mean to drink tea in the teahouse. They not only drink morning tea, afternoon tea and night tea, but also eat pastries with breakfast, spread news, enhance friendships and talk about business. “Yum Cha” is a kind of social activity, and a distinct characteristic of Lingnan culture.
Guangzhou morning tea can be traced back to the Qing Dynasty. In the age of Xianfeng, There was a type of simple teashop named One Percent Shop; it was the first teashop that offered snacks together with tea. Later on, these teahouses developed into big tea restaurants. Since then, morning tea became very popular in Guangdong.Dim sum, roughly translated as “a little bit of heart,” or “a little delicacy,” is the edible counterpart of Yum Cha. Given the long history of Yum Cha and Dim Sum, it is not surprising that by one count, there are some two thousand items that make up the guangzhou dim sum recipe canon. Of this vast repertoire, larger traditional Yum Cha restaurants often make as many as one hundred different dishes a day.
ChineseTeahouse
The time-honored teahouse brands in Guangzhou are Tao tao ju restaurant, Luyvju, Paxiangju, Nanyuan, Beiyuan, Banxi, Datong, Huiru, Sanru, Duoru, Qiaoxin, Dexin, Zhengxin, Fulaiju, Xihuaju, Meizhenju and so on.
The teahouses provide all kinds of dishes and dim sum, including shrimp dumplings, rice noodle rolls, lobag gow, maatai gow, phoenix talons, steamed meatballs, spare ribs, lotus leaf rice, congee, chien chang go, char siu sou, taro dumpling, egg tart and so on.